Cluster Agent Requirements and Supported Environments

Related pages:

This page lists the software requirements, compatibility with different Kubernetes-based software, Agent distribution, licensing, and performance specifications.

Software Requirements

The Cluster Agent is designed to run on Linux and deployed using the AppDynamics Operator.

The Cluster Agent requires:

AppDynamics Controller versions 20.3.0 and later.
Kubernetes versions, 1.11, 1.13, 1.14 or later, with the Kubernetes metrics-server deployed and enabled on the cluster.
A cluster that you can access and monitor.
Sufficient Server Visibility licenses. The Cluster Agent consumes one Server Visibility license. See License Management
A Docker registry from which the AppDynamics Operator can download the Cluster Agent container image. Part of the installation is building the container image, so you must have permission to read and write to your local Docker registry.

If you deploy the Cluster Agent to monitor your Kubernetes Cluster, it does not monitor worker nodes. To monitor worker nodes, you must install the Standalone Machine Agent which consumes additional Server Visibility licenses (one Standalone Machine Agent per node).

The Cluster Agent is compatible with the following platforms:

Cloud Platform	Version
Rancher Kubernetes Engine (RKE)	1.0.4 with Kubernetes 1.17 1.2.1 with Kubernetes 1.19.3
Kubernetes	1.11, 1.13, 1.14, 1.17, 1.19.3 with the Kubernetes metrics-server deployed
Amazon EKS	1.11, 1.13, 1.14, 1.15, 1.16 with the Kubernetes metrics-server deployed
Azure AKS	1.11, 1.13, 1.14, 1.18 with the Kubernetes metrics-server deployed
Google GKE	1.14 and 1.18
Red Hat OpenShift	3.11, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, and 4.5 The metrics-server is not shipped with OpenShift, you must deploy it separately. The CRI-O container runtime is supported on versions 4.2.7 and later.
kubectl	1.11.3 or later

Installing AppDynamics to test or evaluate involves verifying system requirements, preparing the host, and then installing the Controller. See Install the Controller Using the Enterprise Console and Install the Controller Using the CLI.

Cluster Agent Distribution

You can download the Cluster Agent from the AppDynamics Download site as a zip archive. The archive contains all the artifacts required to build the Cluster Agent as a Docker container that will be deployed to Kubernetes using the publicly available AppDynamics Operator. The archive also contains distribution-specific configuration files for the deployment.

Licensing

The Cluster Agent requires a Server Visibility license. To get started, see Enable Server Visibility. If you already have a Server Visibility license, see Install the Cluster Agent for information on using and managing the Cluster Agent on a Kubernetes cluster.

Cluster Agent Performance Certification

Cluster Agent Version

Performance Certification

20.10 and earlier

You can monitor the certified stable limit of 750 pods and 1500 containers

20.11 and later

Cluster Agent Vertical Scaling:
The following is the certified stable limit:
If you run 1 container per pod then you can monitor 2250 pods and 2250 containers.
If you run 2 containers per pod then you can monitor 1500 pods and 3000 containers.

Cluster Agent Horizontal Scaling:
If the number of pods per cluster exceeds the limit, then you can deploy multiple Cluster Agents to monitor the cluster using helm charts. See Deploy the Cluster Agent with Helm Charts.
For the limit of Cluster Agents per Controller, see Cluster Agent and Pod Limits.

Cluster Agent and Pod Limits

On-Premises

You can configure the number of Cluster Agents based on the overall controller capacity. For configuring the limit, see sim.cluster.agent.limit description under Controller Settings for the Cluster Agent.

If your Cluster has more pods than can be monitored, the Cluster Agent ensures that the group of pods being monitored remains the same over time. If at any point in time, any of the reported pods are terminated, the Cluster Agent replaces the terminated pods with previously unreported pods and starts monitoring the newly included pods.
The total pods metric displayed on the pods list page, reflects only the number of pods up to the configured limit. See the sim.cluster.pod.limit description under Controller Settings for the Cluster Agent.

SaaS

Create an AppDynamics Support ticket to configure the limits.